(I was prompted to write this as a comment on the Professor Foxy column about confused gender perception, but it got too long and off-topic)

I very occasionally get called "sir", and it used to bother me, partly because I identify as female, but mainly because saying that a female looks male usually implies that she is ugly. However, on the rare occasions  when I have been called sir, it is usually at first glance, from a distance, or when the person is distracted, and the person has always quickly realized their error when they get a better look at me and apologized, unless they were too embarassed. I usually wear little to no makeup (usually a small amount of mascara or else nothing), and tend to wear my hair pulled back. I have natural blond hair and invisible eyelashes, and this seems to be the main factor that leads to me being called sir. I don't recall this happening when I've had some mascara on (except once from a beggar who was at a distance and who seemed to be drunk or otherwise mentally incapacitated, and recently immigrated from a very different cultural background, and this was in a foreign country so there may have been additional linguistic/cultural confusion). It's not a large amount of mascara that would be easily noticeable and read as "makeup", thereby coding me as female, it's just enough to make my eyelashes visible, and people usually don't realize it's mascara.

Invisible red or blonde eyelashes and eyebrows seem to be one of the odd things that confuse people gender-wise. As far as I can see, this is the reason that some people think that Tilda Swinton and La Roux look like men. In my opinion, they both have pretty, delicate, feminine features, and when people say that they look like men, to me they just look like beautiful light-haired women who are not wearing makeup. When they have conventional makeup on they look conventionally pretty (especially Swinton in the Jarman films - absolutely stunning). Contrariwise, males who have thick long dark eyelashes are often perceived as being feminine looking (i.e. some Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, East Indian boys/men).

Maybe part of the reason the occasional "sir" doesn't bother me anymore is that I've had random strangers describe me as "very beautiful", "so pretty" etc. more times than my gender has been confused, and this has finally started to sink in, after years of being so convinced that I was ugly that no matter how many times people said that I was good-looking I thought that they were just flattering me or had ulterior motives. I live in a city with very little street harassment, and when a stranger does make a comment, it is usually in a respectful manner and they are not expecting to get anything from it.

This may sound counter-intuitive, but the gossip sites have also helped, in that they have made me fully realize just how subjective beauty is, and that no matter how beautiful you are, there are still some people who will say you are unattractive - people even say this about Angelina Jolie and the various other celebrities who vie for the title of most beautiful woman in the world. People will insist on repeatedly saying that perfectly female attractive women (i.e. Jessica Biel) look like men. The gossip sites have made me realize just how deep the misogyny is, and that when people criticize a woman's appearance, often it is very petty, not really based on her appearance, and a way of saying that they don't like her, for whatever reason (sad to say, jealousy probably often comes into it). A woman's appearance is taken as a stand-in for her personality and worth as a human being, and people seem to feel more comfortable criticizing women's physicality than what it is about her that they really dislike (i.e. she's non-conformist, too confident, outspoken, sexual, does not make being conventionally attractive a high priority, or maybe she just has an annoying personality).

Most of the negative comments about my appearance over the years have been from girls or women (or gay men), including once overhearing the statement that I look like a man, from some uber-conventional bleached blonde, heavy make-up, sexy clothes types. This may sound conceited, but I think that some of this criticism is at least in part because I am reasonably conventionally attractive with no effort (no makeup, no hair dying or styling, etc), which is resented by those who feel the need to put a lot of work into their appearance. And of course it's a matter of gender-policing, punishing those who do not conform to their concept of gender norms. The few times that I can recall negative opinions from hetero males are from walking by groups of young guys out in public, when some of them think that I'm hot, and others disagree, and a debate ensues, but it's not directed at me to hear. It seems to be more a matter of their failure to recognize me as a human being while in the process of objectifying me, than an attempt to hurt my feelings. That's leaving out my family, which is a whole other can of worms.

Reading the gossip sites with a critical eye has helped me get past the beauty myth by realizing no matter how perfect your beauty, that will not exempt you from criticism of your appearance, and that comments on women's appearances are more about misogyny, objectification, punishment and tearing women down, than about an objective evaluation of attractiveness. I've been aware of this on a theoretical level for a long time, but seeing the reality of it on the gossip sites has really driven it home.

And what does beauty really matter anyway? We are programmed to feel that we are worthless without it, and although it might bring some objective benefits (i.e. in the employment field), in many other areas being pretty can be problematic - you may have more guys interested in you, but if it's only for your appearance, is that really a benefit? You can be dismissed as a bimbo and routinely misunderstood. It can be more of a battle to be taken seriously intellectually. You may get bimbos wanting to befriend you, and more intelligent people writing you off. If you are made to feel that your looks are what other people value in you, that sets you up for major insecurity. And then there's the harassment and stalking, as recent posts have discussed. As with so many issues for women, it's a catch-22 which we can't win.

Now that I've detached gender ambiguity from ugliness, I think the ambiguity is sort of "cool". The last time that someone called me sir, I laughed off their apology and excuses. I try to take this approach to my appearance in general, to see it as external, random, and not to be taken that seriously. Some people may think that I'm beautiful, some people may think that I'm ugly, and they will treat me differently depending on their opinion, but it has nothing to do with me, with who I am, which is my mind, not my body.

This approach is not unproblematic, as the mind exists in the body, and mind-body dualism has its issues. In some ways saying that only my mind counts contradicts what I said above about the female body being the proxy for the woman's personality, but when it comes to people who don't know me and are going to judge me based on my appearance, or who are the sort of unenlightened people who will criticize my appearance rather than directly criticize my personality, their opinions are not worth much to me. Those opinions merit as little thought as that which produced them.

A lot of this may sound like common sense that your mothers or grandmothers told you, but unfortunately for me, my relatives are very much victims of the beauty myth. Of course if no one at all thought that I was good-looking, it might be harder to accept my appearance. But then again if I was consistently told that I was not good looking, maybe I would have gotten over it, stopped thinking about it, and developed my other qualities. All those mixed messages (some say you're pretty, some say you're not) can be confusing and lead women into wasting a lot of mental time and energy on the subject. I've found that the best way for me to deal with it is to ignore it as much as I can and concentrate on who I am as a person, not as a body. For every reaction I get that tells me I'm attractive, I think of one that told me that I'm unattractive, and vice versa, by which process I reinforce my belief that attractiveness is subjective, random, contextual, not meaningful, and not worth my attention. This was sort of an effort at first, but now my internal reaction to being called beautiful, or sir, or unattractive, is an internal eye-roll and thought of "whatever, that's just your personal opinion".

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September 20, 2009 10:39 PM

[0+]  Comrade Kevin said:

It's not just that beauty is subjective, it's that in a celebrity manner, it's attached to anyone who is being hyped as "the next big thing". I have sorely disagreed frequently with the latest pronouncement of "sexiest _______ alive" because it's just the Emperor's New Clothes, really. It's not real. None of it is real.

Look closely at celebrity. It's not comprised of the most beautiful of the beautiful or even necessarily the most talented of the talented. What they all have in common to me is that they're kind of misfits in a way, with tremendous issues that, paradoxically, make them inclined to strive for stardom. But then notice how few of them can actually handle it without falling prey to excesses, at which point they are lambasted for daring to fall apart at crucial times.

I may not be the most objective person to consult on this matter, but my personal opinion of beauty is based on what I feel inside myself, not what some arbitrary entity deems so. I'm not sure how much the cult of personality known as celebrity really dictates everyone else's conception. We live in a pretty skeptical society as it stands already, but the messages we are bombarded with on all fronts must make an impact somehow.

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September 21, 2009 8:03 AM

[0+]  jellyleelips said:

I love this post!!! Especially the part about women who spend a ton of time on hair and makeup criticizing women who don't, not so much because they dislike the simple look but because they resent women who feel they don't have to be dolled up to be pretty. Sometimes I think this attitude drives "alternative" women (i.e. women covered in tattoos and piercings) to criticize more conventionally feminine women (this is just my personal experience). It takes more pain and work to get tatted and pierced than it ever will to shop for girly girl clothing.

I also really love what you said about gossip blogs and people transferring their criticism of a woman's personality onto her appearance. I wonder if misogyny leads people to not even consider that a woman even has a personality worth criticizing.

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